Thicker Than Water
Katrina Soaked Much of Walter Anderson's Art, A Legacy His Son Intends to Keep Afloat
Walter Anderson's "Clouds," left, and a drawing, above, that was damaged by floodwaters. "We can't lose this," says the artist's son John, below. "We're going to need the inspiration this art provides now more than ever."
(Above And Below: By Linton Weeks -- The Washington Post)
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Monday, September 19, 2005
OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. -- Hurricanes exhilarated Walter Anderson.
As the story goes, the quirky-genius painter/sculptor/craftsman refused to evacuate the little Gulf island where he was working when Hurricane Betsy roared through here in 1965. He curled up under a little boat on a sand dune and weathered the brutal winds and waters.
Forty years later, much of Anderson's astonishingly original artwork has been maimed or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Enthralled by a sense of oneness with his environment, Anderson drew creative strength and spirit from nature, even in its most violent displays. He was a mystic whose passions for art and the natural world went hand in hand with madness.
In a region that takes pride in its eccentrics and artists of all kinds, Anderson and his family came to epitomize the glories -- and now the costs -- of living the artistic life.
On a recent afternoon, Anderson's son John is sorting through the salvaged pieces. It is, he says, "a soggy mess."
He has spread scores of water-soaked original drawings on the back-room floor of Realizations, a gift shop that features reproductions of Anderson's art -- fanciful, colorful paintings and drawings of Gulf Coast birds, trees, alligators, sea life and just about everything else imaginable, all brought to life in a looping, swirling, childlike-yet-sophisticated way. The shop is part of a refurbished train depot.
A few tree-strewn blocks away: The Walter Anderson Museum of Art and community center, which housed exhibits of Anderson's work, stands pretty much unscathed by the wind and water. The art in the museum was safe; many of Anderson's damaged pieces from other places have been taken there for evaluation. But the 28-acre family compound, where several generations of Andersons live, has been pretty much wiped out. Fifteen buildings, including nine family homes, were destroyed, John Anderson reports, and a concrete vault holding most of Walter's art filled with water.
John's home was severely damaged by Katrina, but he is not thinking about that now. He is focused on saving the work of his father, who died of lung cancer several months after the 1965 hurricane. "Words are not appropriate," he says. "There was so much destruction."
Oils are streaked and splattered with mud and salt water. Watercolors are washed out. John Anderson says that more than 80 percent of his father's work -- paintings, drawings, wood and clay sculpture, decorated pottery, block prints, weavings -- was under water at one time or another during the storm.
In a khaki shirt, shorts and duck boots, Anderson, 58, moves among the damaged works -- kneeling on one knee, reaching for art. He has thick blond hair and a bird's eyes -- alarmed, in motion. He is tired and operating on adrenaline. "All of my energy," he wrote to family and friends, "has been spent trying to save a little of Walter Anderson's art."
He added, "The essential cannot be destroyed."
